John Menadue. Repost: NBN; the rot set in with John Howard.

The current NBN mess started with the decision of the Howard Government to privatise the whole of Telstra and not just its retail arm. If the wholesale arm of Telstra had remained in public hands we would have been well on our way to a successful NBN.

Unfortunately, at Tony Abbott’s urging, Malcolm Turnbull also let ideology take over with the resulting problems of an NBN that is slow, obsolete and expensive. See below, a repost of an article on John Howard’s responsibility beginning the problem. John Menadue.

The confusion and the delay that we have got ourselves into with the NBN can be traced back very directly to John Howard and Senator Minchin when they decided to privatise the whole of Telstra and not just its retail arm. That privatisation was in three stages; 1997, 1999 and 2006.

If there had been ‘structural separation’ with the wholesale arm being kept in public ownership, we would now be well on the way to completing the NBN. But with the wholesale arm of Telstra sold off with the rest of the business, the Labor government had to start again.

Malcolm Turnbull clearly didn’t want good advice on the NBN which would have run counter to his ideological leanings and that of his coalition colleagues. He got rid of all the board directors including sacking Brad Orgill, a director of NBN. Malcolm Turnbull didn’t even consult the board before he acted so rashly. Surely the NBN directors had a lot to offer. Institutional memory doesn’t come cheaply or easily in any organisation.

Brad Orgill who would not have been welcome by the Coalition and the News Group for his investigations into the Rudd Government’s Building the Education Revolution said in an article in the Australian Financial Review last Friday (October 4, 2013)

“Would NBN even exist if earlier governments had not made the grave error of privatising Telstra as a vertically integrated business? No. And for me this is the most galling. The privatisation of Telstra’s wholesale business was clearly a mistake. If its wholesale business had continued as government-owned there would be no need for NBN and replacement of copper with fibre would have been progressively undertaken, as has happened in the rest of the world by an established incumbent operator with substantial advantages in resourcing, access and intellectual property. NBN illustrates the risks of privatising natural monopolies.’

Natural monopolies should remain in public hands. We accept that case for example in respect of water and sewerage. We don’t need competitors laying competing and parallel water and sewerage pipes. Competition is best left to the retail level. So it is with telecommunications where exchanges, cables, wires, poles and the pits of the natural monopoly should remain in public hands to serve the whole of Australia regardless of location or class. Opportunist businesses should not be allowed to “cherry pick” the most profitable parts…

The new chair of NBN, Dr Switkowski has been parachuted in by the Liberal party. He has little experience in roll out of construction projects which must dominate the future of NBN. I wonder what he now makes of the Liberal party nonsense of copper connection from the node to the premises when in a 2009 interview he said:

‘The NBN was an important project and that an all fibre networks is a desirable end point. I think the government strategy of investing in a high speed fibre optic base broadband network is a good one. I think it will make a difference to us as a nation and it will ensure more equity in access to relevant services for all Australians.’(AFR 4 October 2013)

Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberal party have described the NBN as a ‘white elephant on a massive scale”. Initially the Coalition described the NBN as “a dangerous delusion”’ and given us quite exaggerated estimates of cost blow-outs. Whilst the NBN has failed badly to achieve its planned roll-out, it is still on budget at $43 billion according to the retiring CEO of the company.

Yet Rio Tinto has had to write-off over $US35 billion in bad investments over the last five years. More write-offs are likely from its coal investments in Africa. BHP has also written off billions. In the clamour to decry public investment in the NBN, the ideologues, including the politicians and business commentators, chose to scarcely mention the appalling business decisions of Rio Tinto and BHP.

The Labor government was criticised because it has not presented a cost-benefit study of the NBN. But I suggest that this criticism has been a quite conscious device to discredit and hopefully delay and then destroy the NBN. A cost-benefit study may be appropriate for private investments with a life of 10 to 15 years. But the NBN will have a public life of perhaps 50 years or more. How useful is a cost-benefit study in those circumstances?

Brad Orgill has commented that a cost-benefit study would not have been required if the Howard government had not sold Telstra as a vertically integrated telco.

Cost-benefit studies of NBNs have been carried out all around the world and the results have been overwhelmingly favourable There has been almost unanimous agreement that fibre to the premises is the best option. McKinsey reported that the financial case for a NBN was strong. Access Economics and IBM have also reported positively on the productivity benefits to the nation of the NBN.

On balance a cost-benefit study would have been useful if for no other purpose than to silence the politically driven critics. In the Howard years there were 25 enquires into telecoms without any serious progress on structural issues.

John Howard left Australia with a major structural deficit in our budget which many commentators, including the IMF, have highlighted. In the same way, the Howard government’s ideological blinkers about privatisation have put us back ten years in developing a world-class NBN. Malcolm Turnbull has told us that he hopes to get politics out of the issue. But it was John Howard’s ideology and politics above everything else, through the privatisation of a vertically-integrated Telstra that has got us into this predicament. Malcolm Turnbull will be hard-pressed to free himself of the political baggage which he and the coalition carry on this vital project.

A good example was the Keating government’s insistence on Telstra joining with News Limited to create Foxtel, which distorted the communications and media industries while doing little to fix the Labor party’s relations with Murdoch and Packer.

That’s just one of dozens of dumb decisions in this sector going back to the Fraser years.

Poorly thought out communications policy with long term damaging effects was by no means unique to the Howard government.

The real problem for Australia is that other countries are overtaking us in rolling out modern communications networks while NBNCo wallows and the politicians squabble.

Again though identical things are happening with railways, roads, ports and education. While we renovate our kitchens and buy investment properties, other nations are investing in 21st Century infrastructure.